


Love Doesn't Discriminate (It Takes & It Takes & It Takes)

by nefarioustortellini



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: (sorry), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Bellamy is the biggest big brother ever to exist, Bellarke, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fluff, Humour, Idiots in Love, Kind of a mixed bag honestly, Minor Wellven because I'm a sucker, Mutual Pining, Octavia is the captain of the Bellarke ship, Several character deaths, Slow Burn, Some hurt/comfort, Soulmate AU, They've both oblivious AF, Underage Drinking, everyone ships it, minor Linctavia, most of it is trash I'm sorry, some language, where you write stuff on yourself and your soulmate can see it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 00:50:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9296978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nefarioustortellini/pseuds/nefarioustortellini
Summary: Bellamy Blake and Clarke Griffin are soulmates.Too bad neither of them knows it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Soulmate au that literally nobody asked for. Because I feel like I’ll never be a True Bellarke Fic Writer until I write one.  
> (Also because I’m just a sucker for them, to be honest.)  
> More specifically, it’s a soulmate au where you can write/draw whatever you want on your skin and it shows up on your soulmate’s skin as well. More serious than my previous fics, and also quite a bit longer, so be prepared for that, I guess. Don’t worry, I still tried to squeeze some humour in there.  
> (I'm not kidding when I say it's a lot longer. This one really got away from me. Expect 17k words of pure, unadulterated trash.)  
> Comments and kudos provide me with self-worth, so leave ‘em behind if you want. I’d highly appreciate it. Hope you enjoy, and Happy (late) New Year!  
> *Title from Hamilton musical

__Clarke gets her first message at age eleven.

Nothing special or flashy. Just one tiny word written in messy black scrawl on her left wrist.

_Hello?_

Frankly, it scares her a little. She doesn’t remember writing it, and she couldn’t have, anyway – it isn’t her handwriting. Her first instinct is to try and wash it off, but no matter how hard she scrubs, it doesn’t make a difference. That’s when the word “soulmate” pops into her head. 

She’s heard of soulmates, certainly. Kids at school talk about them all the time. Some of her friends are receiving and sending messages with their own soulmates. There are stories, fairy tales, legends.

Clarke, for one, has always tried to avoid the subject. She’s never really talked with her parents about it, but she knows enough. She knows her parents aren’t each other’s soulmates. They love each other, but not in the same way they would love their soulmates.

But still. Nothing of what she already knows has really prepared her to get a message of her own. From eleven years of blank skin and radio silence, she’d just assumed she didn’t have one.

When she finally gives in and confronts her father about it, she gets a soft smile and an arm tucked gently around her shoulders, and her first thought is, _this can’t be good._

The Talk itself isn’t as horrifying as she’d expected it to be, though. Her parents give her the basics – a soulmate is someone who is supposedly perfect for you, made to complement you in every way, will bring out the best in you.

“But who are they?” Clarke asks, inspecting the word on her wrist, running a finger absently over it. “Who’s my soulmate?”

“Sorry, kiddo. We can’t tell you that,” her father tells her. “You’re going to have to figure it out for yourself.”

And then the phone rings and her mother gets up to answer it and the conversation ends, just like that.

Later that night – _much_ later – Clarke sits up her bed with a flashlight, still staring at the letters on her skin. There’s a pen in her left hand, hovering above her opposite wrist, poised to write.

She’s hesitant to respond, though. A little afraid. There’s something disconcerting, almost frightening, about exchanging messages with a stranger. She doesn’t know who she’s talking to, she doesn’t know their name or how old they are or what they look like. What if her soulmate is some creepy old dude or something? What about _stranger danger?_

 _Come on, it’s your_ soulmate _,_ she tells herself. _Someone who’s perfect for you. It’s not a creepy old dude._

But she’s still afraid, although she’s not entirely sure what of. Her eyes lock onto the word on her wrist and she reads it over and over and over again until she’s memorized exactly how it looks on her skin.

The red digital clock in the corner of her room reads 12:32 am. Clarke sinks down in her bed, still gripping the pen and flashlight, and sighs.

She doesn’t write back.

***

Bellamy writes his first message to his soulmate at age fourteen.

He’s heard about soulmates all his life, although most of what he’s been told is admittedly not good. Aurora is resentful and broken over the man who was supposed to be hers, the man who won her love and then left, “got himself killed” as she used to say, though she’d never say how. She doesn’t talk about him anymore; hasn’t since Octavia was born.

Although he doesn’t hear much about his father anymore – Aurora’s supposed soulmate – he still hears a lot about how the whole thing isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. His mother’s words are sharp, bitter, warning him not to bother with trying to contact his soulmate. And honestly, he doesn’t have an overwhelming desire to. He’s busy enough, trying to take care of O, doing odd jobs around their admittedly sketchy neighbourhood to bring in some extra cash. Plus school on top of that.

Bellamy doesn’t have _time_ to worry about a soulmate.

But he’s still a fourteen-year-old kid, and hell if he isn’t just a _little_ curious.

He decides to do it at school. Lunch break has just begun, and most of the other kids have already headed outside, the teacher with them. And then it’s him alone in an empty classroom, a black Sharpie in his hand.

The wrist, he thinks. It’s pretty inconspicuous to outsiders, but still impossible for his soulmate to miss. _Unless they’re blind_ , he realizes, but then decides to write a message anyway. What does he have to lose?

Gripping the marker in his right hand, so tight his knuckles turn white, he quickly scrawls down a word before he can think himself out of it.

_Hello?_

He stares at it for a moment after writing it, trying to imagine someone, another kid probably around his age, somewhere in the world, reading the word on their wrist. He wonders what they’re thinking. If they were expecting it. He wonders if they’re somewhere across the planet, or if he’s even already met them.

More than anything else, though, he wonders if they’ll write back.

“Hey, Bellamy?”

He starts in his chair and whirls around to face the door of the classroom. His friend Nathan Miller stands there, tapping a finger absently on the doorframe. “Are you coming outside, or what? We need a sixth player for three-on-three.”

“Yeah,” Bellamy says quickly, shoving the Sharpie into his desk and standing up. “Yeah, I’m coming. I just had to – to take care of something.” He tugs the sleeve of his shirt down, far enough to cover his wrist.

Nathan – more commonly known as just Miller – shrugs and turns to head back outside, unconcerned. He’s not a boy of many words, and if Bellamy isn’t offering information then he won’t ask, which Bellamy appreciates. He follows his friend outside and manages to push thoughts of his soulmate to the back of his mind for at least forty-five minutes, until lunch ends.

When the bell rings and everyone heads back inside, Bellamy sneaks a peek underneath his sleeve. His messy scrawl is still there, smudged a little but still easily readable. There are no other marks.

He checks again when he gets home from school, and again before he goes to bed that night. Every time he looks his heart sinks a little further with the lack of a reply. When he takes one final inspection the next morning and finds nothing, he sighs and goes to the bathroom to wash the mark off.

 _Screw soulmates,_ Aurora always says. _They’re not nearly as great as everyone makes them out to be. Don’t let the stories fool you, Bellamy._

On his way out of the bathroom, he sees a black Sharpie on the counter, and immediately tosses it into a drawer, pushing it all the way to the back.

Screw soulmates.

***

“Do you have a soulmate?” Clarke asks Wells the second he walks in the door.

He blinks, looking a little taken aback. “Hello to you, too.”

“Hello,” Clarke says shortly, stepping aside so he can enter, and then leading him down the hall to her bedroom. “So do you have a soulmate?”

Wells closes the door carefully behind him and looks at her curiously. They’ve never had this conversation before, and it feels awkward to bring it up, but Clarke needs to know.

“I, uh…” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I just kind of thought, you know…”

“What?” Clarke prompts, her fingers subconsciously wrapping around her left wrist.

“I don’t know, I just thought… maybe _you_ were my soulmate,” Wells blurts out in a rush, shifting his weight, and it’s Clarke’s turn to blink in surprise.

“Me?”

“Not as – I mean – I just meant, like, as friends,” Wells clarifies quickly. “Platonic soulmates. That’s a thing, right?”

Clarke’s grip on her left wrist tightens. “Did you write any messages recently?”

“Uh, no,” Wells says, his eyes darting to the way she’s basically cutting off circulation in her arm. “No. I’ve never written anything.”

Tension leaks out of Clarke’s shoulders, and her fingers release her wrist, falling back to hang at her side. “I’m not your soulmate, Wells.”

He’s staring curiously at her arm, taking a few steps closer to her. “You got a message.” It isn’t a question.

“Yeah.” Clarke holds out her left arm. “It used to be right there, across my wrist. It just said ‘hello’. But it’s gone now. I guess they washed it off.”

“You didn’t write back?”

She shrugs, a little defensively. “I don’t know, I just… it just felt weird.”

Wells lifts his eyebrows, putting on that earnest, knowing expression. “Clarke, your soulmate is somewhere out there right now waiting for you to write back. They might think they don’t have one.”

Clarke instinctively covers her left wrist up again. “What if I don’t want a soulmate? What if I don’t _need_ one?”

He frowns slightly and leans his shoulder against the wall. “Well, looks like you have one, whether you want it or not. That’s got to mean _something_ , don’t you think?”

Feeling uncomfortable, Clarke steers the conversation away from soulmates, and although Wells clearly has more opinions on the matter, he lets it drop for now, and they start playing Super Smash Bros and forget all about it.

Every time she tilts her controller, though, Clarke gets a glimpse of her now-bare left wrist, and imagines the writing there.

 _I don’t need a soulmate,_ she decides, thinking of her parents. She has Wells, and he’s enough.

She forces herself not to look at her wrist again for the rest of the day.

***

Octavia is ten, and has a soulmate.

His name is Lincoln, and he’s apparently fifteen years old ( _fifteen!_ _Five years_ older than her), and they’ve been corresponding for _weeks_ now, much to Bellamy’s surprise and displeasure.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demands, inspecting the written words on her arm.

Octavia yanks it out of his grip. “Because I knew you’d get all weird like this! It’s not a big deal, Bell. Lots of my friends have soulmates.”

“He’s _five_ years older than you, O. He’s older than _me_!”

“So what? It’s not like I’m going to go off and marry him right now, idiot,” Octavia snaps, and pulls her sleeve down, hiding the words from sight. A muscle clenches in Bellamy’s jaw.

“I don’t like the idea of you talk—” he starts to say, but Octavia interrupts.

“ _No_ , Bellamy. You’re not gonna stop me from talking to him. Just because you’re mad that you don’t have a soulmate doesn’t mean you can take mine away.”

The words hit home. Bellamy stares his sister down for a moment, his hand automatically going to his wrist. She holds his gaze, looking fierce. Only ten years old, but she’s already a firecracker of a girl, explosive and excitable.

“You’re getting into the rebellious teenage years early,” is what he finally says. “Don’t tell Mom about him.”

Octavia scoffs. “I’m not stupid, Bell.”

With that, she turns and heads back to her room, leaving him standing alone in the middle of the hallway, still clutching his wrist.

For the first time in weeks, he lets himself consider writing his soulmate again. Just to see. To double check.

But then he remembers how he felt that first night, how much it sucked to not get any response, and he shakes his head, storming into his room.

Man. _Screw_ soulmates.

***

Clarke is fifteen, and has never received any word from her soulmate since that first message. In fact, she’s started to wonder if it wasn’t some crazy dream, and she never really got a message at all.

There have been loads of times that she’s found herself alone with a pen or a marker in her hand, contemplating writing back, but she never did.

She doesn’t need a soulmate. She really doesn’t. Her parents aren’t soulmates, and they get along fine. They’re _happy_.

Screw soulmates. She’s going to fall in love with someone on her own terms. Not just because they’re her supposed “other half”. She’s going to find her _own_ other half.

Clarke goes to a party with Wells one night, and meets Finn.

It’s a high school party, so it’s pretty lame. The house is packed with people dancing and making out, and music is blaring, so loud that she can feel it pounding in her chest. Wells sticks tight by her side, his shoulders hunched as he looks around the scene. Parties like this really aren’t his thing, but Clarke had wanted to go, and he was unwilling to let her go alone.

As soon as they enter the house, some senior she doesn’t recognize pushes plastic cups of beer into their hands and shouts a greeting over the music, ushering them inside. Clarke spots Sterling from biology class in the kitchen right away and heads toward him, tugging Wells along behind. He's talking with another boy with broad shoulders and shaggy brown hair. His eyes lock on Clarke as she walks up with Wells and the side of his mouth twitches up in a tiny smirk.

“Clarke! Wells!” Sterling calls, waving them over. “This is Finn."

“Nice to meet you,” Finn says just to Clarke, his smirk softening into a little smile. He’s cute, he really is, and she smiles back at him, just a bit.

They get to talking, just the two of them, and he’s teasing and flirting and grinning at her, and when he asks for her number she gives it to him without hesitation. He calls her the day after the party and asks her out, and they go to a movie and then for a walk in a park, and he pulls her behind a cluster of trees and kisses her, and that night Clarke’s mind is stuck on light brown eyes and soft hands.

The word “soulmate” is never uttered by either of them. Clarke is okay with that.

It’s on their fourth date that Raven shows up.

Finn had taken Clarke to another movie, and afterward they walk out of the theatre with fingers interlocked, laughing, lighthearted, and Finn leans in to kiss Clarke’s cheek.

“Finn?!”

The hurt cry causes both Clarke and Finn to stiffen and pull away from each other in surprise. A tall Latina girl stands nearby, maybe a year older than Clarke. Brown ponytail, red jacket, intimidatingly pretty. Everything about her face seems sharp - her jaw, her eyebrows, her mouth. 

“R – Raven,” Finn stutters. “What – aren’t you – I mean, you live in California.”

“I flew out,” she says, her voice hardening, the pain disintegrating as anger seeps into replace it. “To surprise you.”

Clarke drops Finn’s hand and steps away from him. “Finn, what the hell is going on?”

He looks from Raven to Clarke and back again, his mouth moving as though he’s trying to speak but no words are coming out.

Clarke rolls her eyes and turns her attention to Raven. “You’re his girlfriend?”

“Fuck,” Raven mutters darkly, glaring ferociously at Finn. “Not anymore, that’s for damn sure.”

“Me neither,” Clarke agrees, refusing to look in his direction. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Wait,” Raven says, and before Clarke realizes what she’s doing, she’s already taken two big steps forward and decked Finn right in the face. He stumbles backward, clutching his nose, his eyes wide in shock and pain.

“Okay.” Raven turns to Clarke and jerks her head toward a small black car. “ _Now_ we can go. You want a ride home?”

She explains to Clarke on the drive home how she and Finn had been dating for two years before he had to move out east because of his dad’s job. They’d kept in touch, maintained a long-distance relationship, and she’d decided to fly out and surprise him since his birthday was coming up soon.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke says softly, and Raven just shakes her head, not looking at her. “Was he your…?”

“No.” Raven doesn’t have to ask what Clarke means. “Not my soulmate. He was just… he was all I had. For so long, he…”

Clarke’s heart aches upon seeing the pain in Raven’s face. “He isn’t anymore,” she says decisively as Raven pulls into Clarke’s driveway. Raven turns to look at her, eyes wide and sad and broken. Clarke holds out a hand. “Friends?”

Raven hesitates, and Clarke is starting to feel pretty stupid before Raven accepts the handshake, squeezing her fingers gently. “Friends.”

A few days later, they meet up to find Finn’s car and slash his tires. Raven sprays _Fuck U_ across his windshield in red paint, and just like that, Clarke has a second best friend.

***

Bellamy is eighteen, and Octavia fourteen, when their mother dies.

Cancer is a bitch.

Turns out they have a history of breast cancer in their family, and Aurora hadn’t known she had it until it was far too late. She lasted two weeks after being admitted to the hospital. They hadn’t even had the chance to start chemo.

Bellamy spent hours by her side, holding her hand and whispering comfort, enduring many sleepless nights consoling Octavia, taking care of the legal arrangements, ensuring that he become Octavia’s legal guardian after Aurora died.

A few days before her death, she’d pulled Bellamy close to her, weak and frail in her hospital bed. “Take care of Octavia.” Her voice was gravelly and breathless.

“I do,” he’d answered.

“She’s your little sister,” Aurora continued as if she hadn’t heard him. Maybe she hadn’t. “Your sister. Your responsibility.”

The same words she’d said to him the day Octavia was born. Bellamy’s gut clenched. “I will,” he promised, although he still doesn’t know if she heard him.

Now he stands with his arm around O, who is crying silently, watching as they lower the coffin into the ground. Miller stands on Octavia’s other side, a comforting hand on her shoulder. Having grown up with her, Miller thinks of O as a sister, too.

Octavia sniffles and pushes her face into Bellamy’s chest, and he wraps his other arm around her, too, pulling her closer to him. When he glances down, he catches sight of a thin of blue writing on her upper arm.

Her soulmate.

 _My sister,_ Bellamy thinks, his arms tightening around her. _My responsibility._

***

“I think Raven’s my soulmate,” Wells says, matter-of-factly, like he’s discussing the weather.

Clarke chokes on her drink and Wells has to pat her on the back before she’s recovered enough to say, “I was _not_ expecting that.”

He smiles, just a bit. “I wasn’t either, honestly. But I really think she is.”

Clarke leans back against the kitchen counter, thinking. The more she considers it, the more she agrees with him. Raven is different around Wells than around any of their other friends. She’s… lighter. Happier. More at peace, Clarke supposes. And Wells is clearly smitten with her; has been since Clarke introduced them. “Have you tried writing to her?”

“Not yet,” Wells admits. “But I’m planning on it.”

“When?”

He shrugs. “Soon. I have a plan. I just want to be sure.”

Clarke arches an eyebrow. “You have a _plan_?”

“Yes. Shut up,” he says, and Clarke grins and lets the matter drop.

About a week later, the two of them and Raven are sitting in Clarke’s living room, watching a trashy reality show and making fun of it. Clarke and Wells are on the couch and Raven sits on the floor, leaning back against Wells’ legs.

Wells catches Clarke’s eye and holds up a pen. As Clarke watches, he begins to doodle on his forearm, although what he’s drawing, she can’t see.

After a few minutes, he finishes, and meets Clarke’s eyes again. They wait.

“Holy shit,” Raven says a second later, holding up her arm, and the grin on Wells’ face puts the sun to shame. She turns around to face Wells, gaping at him, and he shows her his own arm with the matching drawing on it.

“You…” she starts to say, and trails off.

“Are my soulmate,” he says, reaching for her hand. “I knew it.”

“…drew me a fucking _raven_?” she finishes, and Clarke lets out a laugh. What a nerd. “You are the cheesiest little shit I ever—”

Wells cuts her off by sliding off the couch and pulling her into his arms, and Clarke thinks that she probably shouldn’t be in the room right now. She sneaks discreetly out into the kitchen to give them some privacy.

There’s a pen on the kitchen counter and Clarke reaches for it without even really thinking about what she’s doing. Wells and Raven are soulmates. Of course they are. Clarke can’t see either of them working with anyone else. She loves them both so much and she’s happy for them.

But.

This kind of puts her on the outs, now. Three’s a crowd, after all.

Clarke taps the pen absentmindedly against the counter, staring at the door from the kitchen to the living room. It isn’t closed all the way, and she can hear them speaking quietly to each other.

Maybe having a soulmate wouldn’t be so bad.

Clarke sighs, drops her head onto the counter, closing her eyes. Is it too late to write back to hers?

 

 _It’s your soulmate,_ she tells herself, listening to Wells and Raven talking. _It should never be too late._

 _Okay,_ another part of her argues, _but I thought I didn’t need a soulmate_.

For the millionth time, Clarke thinks of her parents, and is dangerously close to putting down the pen in her hand. But then she hears Raven laugh from the living room, actually laugh out loud.

It’s been a long time since she heard Raven _really_ laugh.

Clarke’s hand tightens around the pen. Before she can lose her nerve, she writes on her right wrist, _are you still out there?_

It takes her soulmate a nerve-wracking seven minutes to respond.

_So you do exist._

Seeing the works form on her skin, writing themselves across her arm, makes Clarke’s heart nearly stop. Someone is out there, staring at their skin and holding a pen, just like her. Someone whose heart is probably beating just as fast as hers.

 _Yeah,_ Clarke writes back. _I exist._

_Well, took you long enough. Damn._

She smiles, just a little. _I know. Sorry. I just was scared_

Her soulmate takes a moment to consider this before answering, _I can see that, I guess. But five years is a bit much. Woulda been nice to know you were out there_

 _Well, now you do,_ she answers.

 _Now I do,_ her soulmate agrees. _So what’s your name?_

She hesitates. It feels strange, telling this person her name. She feels the same fear and uncertainty as she did years ago when she first got their message. _Can we not say our names?_

Clarke bites her lip, waiting for them to ask why, but the question never comes.

_Okay, if you want. But can I ask how old you are?_

_16,_ Clarke answers, breathing a sigh of relief. _And I’m a girl in case that was your next question_

She doesn’t feel weird about telling them that. There are plenty of 16 year old girls in the world.

 _Happy late birthday,_ answers her soulmate. _I’m 19 and a guy_

_Are you in college?_

_No. But I wish I was_

They continue on like that for a while. Clarke learns that her soulmate has a little sister and that his mother died recently. She learns that he wants to go to college to become a history professor but he has to work in order to provide for himself and his sister, and that he’s biracial – half Filipino, half Caucasian.

Clarke tells him that she wants to be an artist but her mother expects her to follow in her footsteps and become a doctor. She tells him how her two best friends literally just found out they were soulmates, and that she’s an only child but never felt like it because she had Wells.

His words appear on Clarke’s left arm, which means he's right-handed where she is left, and that feels strangely complete. Like he's mirroring her, somehow.

Raven and Wells come into the kitchen just as he's telling her about the time his sister broke a window at school and got them both in trouble for it. The two of them ran out of space on their arms, so they’d moved to their legs. Clarke is perched on the counter, her sweatpants hiked up mid-thigh, watching as his handwriting appears on her shin.

“Clarke,” Wells says, and she starts. He’s staring at her, a little shocked. “You have a soulmate.”

“Yeah,” she answers absently, still reading the story he’s telling, grinning as he goes into detail about his sister’s fake crying in order to get sympathy.

“Well, tell us about them,” Raven demands. “Name? Age? Gender? Approximate location? When are you going to meet them?”

“Chill,” Clarke says. “He’s telling a story, just give me a second.”

“He?” Raven and Wells repeat in unison. Clarke sees them exchange a look out of her peripheral vision.

Her soulmate finishes the story and Clarke responds with, _your sister sounds hilarious!_

 _She is,_ he says, and she can almost sense the fondness in his words.

_Sorry, but my friends are here. I have to go, but I’ll write you later I promise_

_I’m holding you to that,_ he replies, and Clarke grins, pushing her sweatpants back down over her legs. It feels familiar already, like she's known him for years. Although she supposes, in a way, she has. 

“Okay,” she says, facing Wells and Raven. “He’s nineteen, has a younger sister, wants to go to college and major in history—”

“His _name_ , Clarke,” Raven interrupts. “What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. I asked to not say our names.”

Raven’s brow furrows. “Why not? Don’t you want to find him?”

Clarke shrugs. "Well..." The truth is, she doesn’t really know. The whole concept of soulmates is still a little disconcerting to her. “Not yet.”

She looks over at Wells and his gaze locks onto hers. He doesn’t say anything, but Clarke can tell that he understands. On some level, at least. For the millionth time, Clarke thanks God for Wells Jaha.

“We’re probably gonna go,” he says, glancing at Raven. “It’s getting kind of late, and—”

“Hey, I get it,” Clarke says. “Go. Enjoy your newfound soulmate-ism.”

“That’s not a word, but you tried,” Wells says with a grin. “You too.”

They leave, and Clarke looks down at her arms again, reading the words over and over again, a smile finding its way onto her face.

She has a _soulmate_.

***

She finally, _finally_ wrote back. 

Bellamy’s still a little confused as to why she didn’t want to say her name, but it hardly matters. She finally wrote back. She _exists_.

The front door slams shut, making him jump a little. “Bell?” calls Octavia, and he hears her footsteps coming down the hall.

He tries to pull his sleeves down quickly, but he’s misjudged how long it would take for her to walk down the hall, and she catches him. “Is that _writing_ on your wrist?”

“Um,” Bellamy says.

“Holy shit, Bell, you have a soulmate!” she exclaims, rushing over to yank his sleeve up. Bellamy pulls his arm away from her.

“You can’t just read my conversations with her,” he protests. “I don’t try to read what you and Lincoln say to each other.”

“It’s a her,” Octavia notices. “What’s her name?”

“I don’t know,” Bellamy admits. “We agreed to not say our names. But I know she’s sixteen.”

Octavia blinks in surprise. “That’s practically _my_ age!”

“No, she’s older than you.” Bellamy stuffs his hands in his pockets. “You hungry?”

His sister is not falling for the subject change. “You freaked the fuck out when you heard about the age difference between me and Lincoln! And the difference between you and your soulmate is practically the same as ours!”

“Watch your language,” Bellamy says nonchalantly, and heads down to the kitchen, O trailing behind him. “And it’s not the same. It’s only three years. You and Lincoln are _five_ years apart. And when I found out about him, he was a teen and you were only ten. He’s _twenty_ now, O. Older than me. You have to admit it’s a little weird.”

“Like I keep telling you, I’m not going to run off and marry him right now,” Octavia protests. “But when I’m twenty and he’s twenty-five, it won’t be weird.”

“Yeah, but you’re _not_ twenty,” Bellamy points out. “So I don’t want you near him until you are.”

“How did this become about me?” Octavia leans back against the counter and watches as Bellamy opens the fridge and digs around inside it. “I thought we were talking about _your_ soulmate.”

“Not anymore. What do you want for dinner?”

Octavia rolls her eyes and lets the subject drop for now. Bellamy starts making stir fry, and still gets a little thrill every time the cuff of his sleeve rides up and he sees the writing underneath.

He has a _soulmate_.

***

Clarke is seventeen, and her dad is dead.

After being sent to prison – turned in by his _own wife_ – he’d been murdered, beaten to death by some of his cellmates.

 _That’s fucked up,_ her soulmate says when she tells him.

_Tell me about it_

_How are you doing?_

Clarke sighs. _As well as I can be, I guess. I don’t know. The funeral was rough. But my friends are helping a lot._ After a moment, she adds, _and you._

_Glad to help. You need anything?_

_Just to rant, I guess_

_So rant away_

She sighs again and presses the back of her hand to her eye. She’s cried so much in the past few days that it feels like her eyes might be permanently stained red.

_My mom’s making us move. So I have to leave everything because just because she doesn’t want any reminders of what she did._

_Fuck,_ he says after a short pause. Clarke laughs a little bit.

_Fuck is right. We’re leaving tomorrow, so I should really be packing_

_Anything else you need?_

_No, I’m alright. Thanks_

_Literally anytime,_ he says, making Clarke feel warm inside. _Write when you can_

 _Will do,_ Clarke answers, and tucks the pen behind her ear, going back to packing. She feels better, though. It felt good to vent, to him in particular. Something about talking to him calms her down, makes her feel lighter, more focused. They’ve grown quite a bit closer in the past year and Clarke hates herself a little bit for not writing him back sooner.

She doesn’t get a chance to talk to him again for a while, though, because the next day Abby forces them both onto a plane, flying up north to their new home, and Clarke doesn’t dare try and contact him with her mother sitting right next to her. She’s kept him a secret from Abby so far, and she intends to keep it that way.

Abby enrolls Clarke in the local high school before she’s even fully moved into her room. She’s hardly had time to exchange a single message with her soulmate before she’s walking in the front doors to her new school.

It’s a hell of a lot bigger than her old one, and she gets lost easily. Soon enough the bell is ringing and she’s still stuck in the middle of the hallway, trying to make sense of her schedule.

She stumbles into chemistry eight minutes late, and all eyes turn to her. The teacher hardly blinks, just asks, “Clarke Griffin?” and when she nods, he directs her to a seat in front of a pair of boys and gives her a workbook. She’s about to start the first question when someone taps her shoulder and she whirls around to face the two boys behind her.

“Your name’s Clarke?” one of them asks. He’s lean and lanky, with messy brown hair and a pair of goggles on his head. “Like Clark Kent?”

The other boy, a thin Korean boy with a mop of straight black hair falling across his forehead, rolls his eyes at Goggles Guy. “You’re such a nerd,” he mutters.

“Like you're any different,” Goggles retorts, and turns back to Clarke. “Where you from?”

“Uh, Colorado?”

“Welcome to Minnesota,” the other boy says kindly. “I’m Monty, this is Jasper. I’m sorry to say he’s even bigger of a nerd than he appears at first.”

Jasper grins and shrugs, not offended in the slightest, and Clarke likes them.

It’s a work period and the teacher honestly doesn’t seem to care at all, so the three of them talk all through the class and then they invite her to sit with them at lunch, and honestly Clarke did not think that making new friends was going to be this easy.

They find a spot in the cafeteria and they’ve only just sat down when someone plops down into a chair next to Monty, a girl with dark brown hair and strikingly pretty features – light green eyes, strong jawline, sharp eyebrows. She sighs and snags a French fry off Monty’s lunch tray. “ _Guys_. Mr. Pike is the _actual worst_.”

“Don’t go murdering any teachers,” Monty tells her, amused. “At least not until Friday. And stop taking my French fries. If you want them so badly, go get some of your own.”

The girl reaches over and takes another fry, antagonizing him. “Don’t tell me what to do, Green.” She settles back in her chair and then realizes that there’s a newcomer at the table. “Hey, you’re new.”

“Octavia, this is Clarke,” Jasper says. “Clarke, meet Octavia Blake.”

Octavia raises an eyebrow and looks her over. Clarke waits, a little concerned, but all Octavia says is, “Like Clark Kent?”

“That’s what I said!” Jasper exclaims, and he and Octavia high five while Monty rolls his eyes and grins at Clarke.

And just like that, Clarke has friends.

***

“So, do you have a soulmate?” Octavia asks her one day. The two of them are sitting outside on the grass, eating lunch. Jasper and Monty had to go to a film club meeting, so Clarke is left with just Octavia.

“Uh,” Clarke says. She fiddles with the cuff of her sleeve. “Yeah, I do. How about you?”

“I do, too.” Octavia leans forward, lifting her eyebrows. “Have you met yours yet?”

Clarke shakes her head slowly, not sure what Octavia’s getting at. “Have you?”

“I’m going to,” Octavia tells her confidentially. “His name’s Lincoln and he’s twenty-one, and my brother doesn’t approve because of the age difference, but he happens to be in town for an art show and he asked if I wanted to meet up so I’m going to, but if my brother finds out then I’m basically fucked.”

Clarke blinks. “That’s…”

“A tangled web?” Octavia asks. “Yeah, don’t I know it.”

“Wait, Octavia… _this guy is twenty-one_?”

Octavia winces a little. “Yeah. But it’s okay! He’s my soulmate and we’ve been talking since I was, like, eight. I know him pretty well, trust me.”

Clarke frowns. “I don’t know if—”

“Come on, Clarke, please don’t parent me,” Octavia pleads. “He’s my soulmate. Don’t you want to meet yours? You have to know how I feel.”

Clarke thinks of her own soulmate, how warm and comfortable and safe he makes her feel. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t know his name, or that she’s never met him in person. She trusts him. She can’t help it.

“Yeah,” she says finally. “I do. But I’m coming with you to meet him. Just to be safe.”

“Sure,” Octavia agrees easily. “You’d have to meet him eventually anyway.”

“I would?”

“Of course. You’re one of my best friends now, idiot,” Octavia says, bumping Clarke’s hip with a grin, and Clarke grins back.

They set out to meet Lincoln that weekend, at a café called Grounders somewhere downtown. He’s already there when they arrive; a tall, muscular man sitting alone in the far corner, scribbling something onto the back of his hand. Octavia shows Clarke her own hand and both of them see the words forming on her skin: _I’m already here, are you close?_

Octavia pulls the pen out from behind Clarke’s ear and writes back, _Look up. The brunette by the counter._

The man’s head comes up sharply and his eyes land on Octavia almost immediately, who gives him a tiny wave and a shy smile.

Octavia, _shy_. Clarke never thought she’d see the day.

They go over to Lincoln’s table and take a seat. Octavia introduces Clarke to him, and he gives her a quick nod, but he seems to only have eyes for Octavia. Clarke doesn’t blame him. She’s his soulmate. In fact, it feels almost strange to be sitting here listening to them talk. Clarke feels like she should give them some alone time, so she gets up and heads for the counter, telling O she’s going to buy something.

Watching them from the lineup, Clarke can’t help but smile a little. Octavia is clearly smitten, and Lincoln is sweet and respectful, keeping the age difference in mind, but he obviously has deep feelings for her, too.

Clarke buys a muffin and hesitates to go back to the table, thinking she should let them be for a little longer. She lingers near the counter, keeping an eye on them, when she hears the bell ring and another customer enters.

“Octavia Blake!” someone shouts, a man’s voice, frustrated and angry. Clarke whirls around, not having expected this.

Neither did Octavia, apparently, who’s risen from the table and turned to face the man calling her. Lincoln stands too, concerned.

The man stalks through the café right up to Octavia. “I can’t _believe_ you,” he seethes, taking ahold of her arm. “Come on, we’re going home.”

“What the hell, Bellamy?” Octavia yanks her arm out of his grip. “I’m not going anywhere. What are you doing here?”

“What am _I_ doing here?” he nearly yells. “Octavia, you deliberately disobeyed me! I told you not t—”

“You don’t run my damn life!” Octavia shouts. “You’re not going to stop me from meeting my fucking _soulmate!_ Chill the hell out, would you?”

“O, you don’t even _know_ this guy! He’s way too old for you. For all you know, he could be a—”

“A what?” The words are out of Clarke’s mouth before she can stop them, sharp and cold.

The man turns to face her. “Mind your own damn business,” he snaps, and Clarke’s jaw clenches.

“I am,” she says. “Octavia’s my friend. I came here with her to meet Lincoln. This _is_ my business. So, please, finish your sentence. What exactly were you just about to accuse him of being? Someone you’ve never even spoken to? Someone you can’t _possibly_ make a judgement call on, but Octavia can, since he’s her soulmate and they’ve been speaking for years?”

“Octavia,” the man spits, “is _my_ sister, and _my_ responsibility, and she is still a minor living under my roof, so _I_ am going to decide what is best for her, not you. Stay out of this.”

“Bellamy, shut the hell up,” Octavia hisses. “You’re such a dick. We’re leaving. I’ve had enough.” She turns to Lincoln, and her face softens. “I’m sorry, my brother’s an idiot. I have to go.”

Lincoln looks bewildered and confused, unsure how to really handle the situation. “Oh, uh, that’s okay. I’ll…” He pauses, looks at Bellamy, who’s already started for the door. Lincoln lowers his voice and leans closer to Octavia. “I’ll write you later,” he says. “I hope everything works out.”

“Yeah,” Octavia mutters. “Me, too.”

With that, she turns and follows her brother outside. Clarke hears their argument resume before the door to the café has even closed.

“Well,” Clarke says, turning to Lincoln. “That’s not exactly how I thought this day would go.”

***

 

Bellamy is _pissed_.

If Octavia had just fucking _talked_ to him about Lincoln, then maybe this would’ve been okay. If she’d let him come along to meet the guy, or even told him that she was going to meet him, this probably could have been avoided.

But no, she snuck out and kept secrets from him and now he’s going to have to play the parent and punish her. He hates doing that, he really does, but he has to.

“I can’t _believe_ you did that,” he shouts, slamming the door to their house behind him. Octavia glares at him, practically radiating with fury.

“I was _meeting my fucking soulmate_! If you were meeting yours, I would never have burst in on you and freaked out like you did! You completely embarrassed me in front of him!”

“I wouldn’t have had to if you had just talked to me about him!” Bellamy shoots back. “You can’t keep secrets like that from me, O!”

“Fuck,” Octavia hisses through her teeth. “I’m done. Good thing Clarke was there to stand up for Lincoln, or you would’ve made me look like even more of a loser.”

“Who the hell is Clarke?”

Octavia rolls her eyes. “Clarke Griffin. My friend, the one who came with me. The one who didn’t take any of your _shit_ —”

“That’s enough!” Bellamy snaps. “You’re grounded. No more seeing Lincoln, at least not until I meet him properly.”

“You’re such an _ass_.” Octavia storms up to her room like the rebellious, moody teenager she is, and Bellamy goes to the living room to pound his fist into a pillow.

Fuck, he hates it when he and O fight. He really, really hates it. Why can’t she see he’s just trying to protect her? He just wants the best for her, why is that such a bad thing?

 _Clarke Griffin,_ he suddenly thinks out of nowhere. Octavia’s friend, the one who butted in on their conversation like it was any of her business. The one who tried to tell him how to take care of his own sister.

Wait – _Griffin_? As in _Abigail_ Griffin, the famous surgeon-turned-politician? The one who’s three times as rich as he’ll ever be?

Bellamy groans. Of course O had to go and make friends with the stuck-up, shallow, rich girl. Clarke Griffin will just be another thorn in his side, he can already tell. Why the hell is someone as loaded as she is going to a public school? And why does she have to be friends with O? Is she trying to use her for something? O’s father was rich, and he fucked their mom over pretty badly. He was a conceited, entitled pig who thought he could just take whatever he wanted, and he used Aurora to get it.

Bellamy doesn’t trust rich people. And he definitely doesn’t trust Clarke Griffin.

But _of course_ O does.

There’s a pen on the coffee table and Bellamy grabs it, is writing to his soulmate before he even fully realizes he’s doing it. _Sisters are dumb,_ he scribbles on his palm, without giving context.

He has to wait for a full ten minutes before he gets an answer. _Brothers are, too._

Bellamy arches an eyebrow and writes, _I thought you were an only child._

 _I am,_ she answers. _Doesn’t mean I don’t know how dumb brothers can be._

A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. _Fair enough._

He wants to tell her about Octavia, how frustrated he is that she won’t listen to him, won’t obey him, but he doesn’t know if it’s too much. Sometimes overly personal information freaks out his soulmate. It’s best to keep things vague.

 _Sisters can be dumb, too, though,_ she grants a moment later. _I’ll give you that._

 _Right,_ he answers. _Siblings in general._

_Parents, too._

Bellamy winces, thinking of his neglectful mother, O’s rich fucktard of a father. His soulmate’s complete ice queen of a mother. _Parents, too_ , he agrees.

She doesn’t write back, but Bellamy doesn’t mind. She doesn’t need to. Talking to her always relaxes him, and no matter how short the conversation was, Bellamy already feels more calm and collected.

 _I’m really glad I have you,_ he scrawls along his arm before he can think better of it.

A moment passes before the reply comes. _Yeah, I’m really glad I have you, too._

***

“Grounded,” Octavia tells Clarke the next day at school, sullen and moody. “For a week.”

“Shit,” Clarke mumbles, and Octavia laughs a little, without humour.

“Yeah, it sucks.”

“Your brother’s kind of an asshole,” Clarke tells her.

Octavia shrugs. “Yeah, kind of.” After a pause, though, she adds, a little guiltily, “He’s really not all bad, though.”

She doesn’t elaborate, and Clarke doesn’t ask for details, but there’s definitely a story behind those words. She has a bit trouble connecting the furious dickbag she met at the café with someone who “isn’t all bad”, though.

Jasper and Monty show up then, engaged in a fierce debate about which actor is the best Spiderman – Toby Maguire, Andrew Garfield, or Tom Holland – and all talk of Octavia’s brother ceases as the four of them start to laugh and argue playfully. Clarke doesn’t give any more thought to Bellamy Blake for the next few days.

The next time she sees him, it’s when he comes to get Octavia after school. Usually Clarke leaves right away, but today she lingers, spending a few minutes to talk with Octavia by their lockers before starting the long walk home. The door at the end of the hall opens and in walks none other than Bellamy Blake. His eyes meet hers in a matter of seconds and he lifts one eyebrow.

Clarke scowls instinctively, remembering how much of asshole he’d been in the café. Instead of returning her fierce look, however, he gives her a condescending little smirk as he walks up to them.

“Come on, O, get a move on,” he tells her, and she swings her backpack over one shoulder obediently.

“Bye, Clarke,” she says. Bellamy folds his arms and meets Clarke’s eyes.

“See you around, Princess,” he drawls, and Clarke can’t hide her look of surprise.

 _Princess?_ What the hell is that supposed to mean? She has no idea where it came from, but she does not like it.

Is that what he thinks of her? That she’s just some entitled rich girl who thinks she’s better than him?

 _Asshole,_ Clarke decides, and begins the walk home.

She has a few more similar run-ins with him in the next few weeks, each of them involving him calling her “Princess” mockingly and some of them involving her calling him “Asshole”, which highly entertains Octavia and doesn’t seem to bother Bellamy nearly as much as Clarke had hoped.

Her next major encounter with him, though, doesn’t happen until about a month after the Lincoln fiasco. Octavia’s invited her, Jasper, and Monty over for a movie night as well as some of their other friends – Harper, Monroe, and Maya. They watch Disney movies, and Jasper and Octavia sing along loudly to all the songs, and Bellamy is nowhere to be found, to Clarke's relief.

Around four in the morning, everyone’s fallen asleep except for Clarke and Jasper, who are still awake enough to watch _Aladdin_. Maya is curled up into Jasper’s side, Octavia’s feet are in Clarke’s lap and her head on Monroe’s shoulder, and Monty and Harper are asleep in a heap on the floor.

Clarke has hiked her pajama pants up to her knees so that she can write her soulmate without using her arms – that would be too conspicuous. He’s working on a massive paper right now, he tells her, something due in class the next day. He got into college as a part-time student not too long ago.

“Clarke?” Jasper whispers, and she looks over, instinctively pushing her pajamas back down over her legs. “How much do you love me?”

Clarke sighs. “What do you want?”

He grins. “You know me so well. Can you make some popcorn?”

“You can’t make it yourself?”

“Well…” Jasper looks down at Maya, whose head is tucked into the crook of his neck. “I don’t really want to wake her up.”

Clarke rolls her eyes, but Jasper and Maya are actually really cute, so she can’t bring herself to be _too_ mad. “Fine. Be right back.”

“You’re the best, Griffin,” he tells her as she heads to the kitchen.

There’s still a few packages of popcorn laid out on the counter, so Clarke grabs one and puts it in the microwave, making sure to close the door between the living room and kitchen so the sound doesn’t wake any of her friends. Then she leans back against the counter and waits.

She’s not expecting to hear shuffling footsteps coming down the hall.

Clarke pushes off the counter and clenches her fist, wondering what to do if it’s a burglar. But then Bellamy comes into the kitchen, yawning, and she relaxes.

“Who the hell is making…” he begins, staring at the popcorn in the microwave, and then his eyes land on Clarke. “Oh. It’s just you.”

Clarke opens her mouth but no words come out. He was the last person she’d expected to see tonight, and she certainly hadn’t expected to see him like _this_. He’s devoid of a shirt, clad only in grey sweatpants and literally nothing else, dark messy curls falling over his forehead, his chin scruffy with the hint of a beard.

 _Fuck,_ is the only coherent thought Clarke can muster as she takes in the sight.

“What are you doing?” she manages at last. Bellamy turns to her with an arched eyebrow, but he apparently can’t quite pull off the condescending, arrogant look when he’s this tired. He flicks on the kettle and takes a container of instant coffee out of the cupboard.

“I live here. Or did you forget O was my sister?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Clarke huffs. “What are you doing up? It’s really late.”

“Working on something,” he grumbles. “Needed caffeine. Why do you care?”

“I don’t,” Clarke says quickly. “I just – didn’t know anyone else was home.”

“Surprise,” Bellamy says gruffly. He turns toward the kettle, running a hand through his curls, messing them up even more than they already are, and Clarke is more aware than ever of his shirtlessness.

 _Get a grip, Griffin!_ She looks away from him, leaning back against the counter.

The microwave beeps at the same time the kettle begins to whistle, and the two of them go about their respective tasks of getting out the popcorn and making coffee. Clarke had pulled her blonde waves up into a bun to get it out of her way, but as usual her hair is rebelling, and a few wayward strands tumble into her eyes as she reaches across the counter for an empty bowl. Frustrated, she pushes it out of her face, tucking the strands behind her ear, and grabs the bowl.

She senses Bellamy’s gaze on her more than she sees it. Despite her better judgement, she looks up to stare back, and his eyes lock on to hers. They’re a dark, rich brown, the same colour as the coffee in the mug before him. So dark, in fact, that she can hardly tell where his pupil is.

 _I should look away,_ she thinks _._ But she doesn’t.

He isn’t glaring or smirking like normal, he’s just staring back at her with a completely unreadable expression. It isn’t nearly as hard or angry as his usual look. There’s something in his face that’s soft and almost endearing, and then Clarke is opening her mouth to say something, she doesn’t even know what, but then Bellamy pulls his eyes from hers and the moment passes.

Clarke feels an unexpectedly sharp pang of loss as he turns away from her, picking up his coffee mug in one hand and stuffing the other into the pocket of his sweatpants. “’Night, Princess,” he mutters, but it doesn’t sound harsh or cruel the way it usually does, more like a nickname, and Clarke doesn’t even have time to respond before he’s disappeared down the hall again.

 _Fuck,_ she thinks again, and takes the popcorn out to the living room.

***

Clarke starts coming over a lot more often, much to Bellamy’s dismay. Octavia invites her over so often she's practically moved in, and nearly every day that he comes home from class or work, the two of them are there in the kitchen or on the couch, watching TV or cooking something or whatever else.

Bellamy used to just avoid them, rolling his eyes or smirking when Clarke sends him a glare and then going straight to his room, but he’s decided that he’s not going to let the princess drive him out of his own house. One day, when he gets home after a particularly grueling day of work – he has a job doing maintenance work and although it pays well, it’s exhausting – and finds Clarke and Octavia curled up on the couch, swamped in blankets, watching Family Feud and yelling at the TV.

He almost heads to his room, leaving them alone, but he’s tired and the couch looks really comfortable and he just wants to watch Family Feud and relax, so he thinks _fuck it_ and walks over to plop down in between them.

“Hand me a blanket, will you?” he calls to Octavia, who does so, but not without raising her eyebrows questioningly. He shrugs. “I’m tired and want to watch TV. Sue me.”

“Fair enough,” O concedes, and that’s that.

Clarke ignores him for the first little bit, getting a little quiet when he joins them, but then the commercial break ends and the show comes back on and Clarke seems to forget he’s around. She and Octavia start shouting at the TV, getting frustrated when the players give stupid answers, and generally just having a good time.

The next question is _Name a type of fish that is served in fine restaurants,_ and Clarke calls out, “Branzino.”

“What the hell is a _branzino_?” Bellamy says before he can think better of it.

“It’s a fish, moron.”

“I’ve never heard of that in my life.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot you were the world expert on fish. If _you_ haven’t heard of it, then it must not exist.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes. “It’s not up there.”

“Fuck you, of course it is,” she shoots back.  

Octavia is watching this exchange, grinning like a Cheshire cat, and Bellamy really does not appreciate it, elbowing her. “Why are you making that face?”

“What face?” she asks, and turns back to the TV.

The typical answers are all covered, of course – salmon, halibut, herring, mackerel. There’s still one answer left, though, and no one can seem to get it. Clarke shakes her head. “Branzino, I’m telling you.”

“Not one of those people up there is going to say _branzino_ ,” Bellamy mutters.

The host walks over to the opposite family when the first fails to provide the correct answer, and repeats the question. One of the players declares “Sea bass!” with confidence.

The bell chimes, and the answer on the board flips over, revealing _European sea bass._ Bellamy turns to Clarke with a smug grin. “See?”

Clarke just sighs and shakes her head. “Feel free to Google ‘branzino’, idiot. Then you’ll see.”

Bellamy has no idea what she’s trying to say, so he just drops it, and then the host asks the next question, which sets off yet another round of yelling and arguing.

And it’s… nice, actually. No matter how harsh the insults get, it’s just _fun_ to argue with Clarke. She’s always ready with a witty retort to match his sarcasm, and when she gets _really_ mad then her face turns pink which never fails to amuse Bellamy. He knows he’s being stupid, picking fights over the smallest things, but there’s something impressive about the way she refuses to back down, even over something completely trivial.

Octavia, of course, loves every second of it. Bellamy can tell by her smile that she thinks it’s completely hilarious. “It’s like you’re pulling her pigtails,” she says after Clarke leaves that night. “Or poking her, or stealing her pencils, or whatever it is that little boys supposedly do the girls they like.”

Bellamy chokes on nothing. “I’m sorry, what?”

Octavia’s smile grows wider, turning into a leer. “You’re such an idiot,” is all she says. "What's this, by the way?"

She taps a mark on his upper arm, a message from his soulmate. He jerks back instinctively from her touch; there's something extremely personal and weird about letting people see his messages with her, even if it  _is_ just Octavia. "It's just a soulmate mark."

She hums under her breath, nods a little, and then disappears into her room and Bellamy is left standing in the hallway, feeling like he’s missing something.

He pulls out his phone, opens Google, and types in _branzino._ The results pop up instantly: _Branzino, or European sea bass, is a fish that resides primarily in the ocean…_

She was right. Of course.

He writes his soulmate that night, saying only _I’m so pathetic_ without giving context, and she responds almost immediately with _yeah, me too._ He doesn’t ask for details and neither does she.

Clarke comes over again a few days later. He picks another fight over a game of Monopoly.

***

Clarke turns eighteen, and Wells dies.

Shot in a mugging, Raven tells her over the phone. Right in the head. He was dead before they could call 911.

Clarke spends the day locked in her room, staring at the ceiling and refusing to let her mother in. She buys a plane ticket and flies back out to Colorado for the funeral without telling any of her friends.

She and Raven both give speeches, and Wells’ father cries at her eulogy, and together they scatter his ashes in the forest. Wells always loved the trees.

Clarke doesn’t cry at the funeral. Neither does Raven. They accept hugs from strangers and old friends and distant Jaha relatives and hear the words “I’m sorry” over and over and over again until they lose all meaning. But they don’t cry.

Later, though, when the sky grows as dark as the bags under their eyes, the two of them get in Raven’s old black Toyota and drive until the city lights aren’t even a speck on the horizon. They pull off the highway and park in the grass in the middle of nowhere and sit on the hood, staring up at the moon.

“The second he died, I knew,” says Raven, tracing the inside her forearm with her index finger. Her voice is brittle and hoarse. “I got this empty feeling inside, and all his messages just faded away. Then it was just my own writing and nothing else.”

And now, now is when they cry, the tears coming softly at first and then turning from trickles into rivers, tightening Clarke’s throat and then burning it like acid. The sobs wrack their bodies and they hold onto each other like lifelines, like they’re keeping each other afloat, like they’re all the other has left. Clarke hates to cry, because it doesn’t _solve_ anything, because it’s just raw emotion and no logic, but she can’t bring herself to do anything else.

Grief isn't supposed to be logical, anyway. 

“Hurts like a bitch,” Raven says as Clarke drives them back, resting her temple on the cold window and staring out into the night, and Clarke thinks that’s a pretty good way to sum it all up.

Raven flies back with her, saying that she’s going to college in Minnesota anyway, might as well go back with Clarke now. There’s no point in her staying in Colorado anymore. Pain is all that is left for her there. They get stuck with a night flight, so Raven falls asleep on Clarke’s shoulder, her legs stretched across the empty seat on her other side, and Clarke stares out the window into the inky black sky.

She pushes up her sleeves, absent, and finds a new message from her soulmate near her elbow.

_Is everything ok? You haven’t been replying_

Clarke pushes her sleeves up further and finds her arms are littered with little notes. He’s been concerned.

 _My friend died,_ she writes back. It feels strange to write the words out.

Her soulmate doesn’t answer for a few minutes before he finally writes back, _How are you?_

 _I wouldn’t say I’m okay,_ she answers. _But I’m not alone so that’s good._

 _You’re never alone,_ he says, and Clarke smiles despite the pain tearing at her heart.

_Neither are you._

A short time passes before Clarke scribbles down, _I miss you. Is that a weird thing to say? I know we’ve never met but I still miss you, somehow_

 _I miss you too,_ he answers right away. _I know what you mean._

Raven stirs beside her, sitting up, and Clarke discreetly pulls her sleeves back down.

Abby sets up a room for Raven, but the first few nights, it remains untouched. She sleeps in Clarke’s bed next to her, both of them curled up underneath the covers, together in their grief.

The doorbell rings three times each day, and every time it does Clarke’s mother comes upstairs to tell her that her friends are here. Clarke refuses to see them. She’s hiding in her room for a _reason_.

When she finally does return to school for the last month before finals, her friends know better than to ask any questions. Jasper wraps her in a massive bear hug as soon as he sees her, and Monty splits his dessert with her at lunch, and Octavia invites her over for the weekend, and Clarke loves them more than ever.

“I have a friend staying at my house right now,” she tells Octavia, who makes a dismissive gesture with her hand.

“They can come too, if they want. Not a big deal,” and that’s how she and Raven end up seated on the floor of the Blake’s living room with Octavia at 3:17 am, surrounded by blankets and bags of chips and booze.

“Uh, you know we’re all underage, right?” Clarke says when Raven pulls a bottle of wine out of her backpack.

Raven shrugs. “The drinking age in Canada is eighteen,” she mutters, and puts the lip of the bottle to her mouth. 

Octavia observes Raven curiously. There’s a bit of friction between the two of them, as Clarke had known would happen when she introduced them – two headstrong, fierce personalities. But Octavia now seems more intrigued by Raven than anything else.

“What’s it like?” she asks quietly. Raven hands the bottle over to Clarke and faces Octavia.

“What?”

“Losing your soulmate.”

Clarke freezes, waiting for the wrath of Reyes to be unleashed. You don’t get personal with Raven unless she offers the information up herself. You just don’t.

Raven’s face hardens, and Clarke braces herself for the inevitable scathing remark. Octavia waits, too, her chin lifted bravely, though not in animosity.

They maintain eye contact for a few seconds, and then Clarke passes the wine back to Raven, who takes it and sighs. “His marks disappeared,” she whispers. “And I just felt... hollow.”

Octavia’s eyes grow soft, and Clarke knows she’s thinking of Lincoln. Clarke touches her upper arm subconsciously, running a finger over a small drawing she’d made for her soulmate about a week ago. She’d been trying as hard as possible to keep it from being washed off.

“What’s that?” O asks, and Clarke starts a little in surprise.

“It’s, uh, it’s just a soulmate mark,” she says. Octavia blinks, and a strange look flickers over her face, but then it’s gone and she just nods.

There’s the sound of a key in the lock and all three of them start, looking to the door. Bellamy walks in, sighing heavily, tosses his keys on the counter and runs a hand through his hair. He looks utterly exhausted, so much so that Clarke feels a pang of sympathy for him.

“Bell,” Octavia says, and he turns to look at them, his eyes grazing over Octavia, resting on Clarke for a few seconds, and then landing on Raven. He lifts his eyebrows.

“Raven Reyes,” she says before he can ask. “Clarke’s friend. Engineering major. Want some wine?”

Bellamy rubs his neck, not looking angry so much as just completely done. “Why the hell do you three have wine? How old are you, Reyes? Eighteen?”

Raven tilts her head and observes him for a moment. “You’re kind of a dick,” she says. “And I’m nineteen.”

“Still below drinking age,” Bellamy points out. Raven huffs, glaring daggers at him.

“Cut me a break, Grandpa,” she snaps. “My soulmate just got murdered.”

Bellamy blinks, taken aback. Raven looks away from him and takes a swig, then hands it to Clarke.

He rubs his jaw, slumping against the wall. “Damn,” he mutters. “That’s…”

His voice trails off. “Yeah,” Raven agrees. “It fucking sucks.”

Bellamy shakes his head a little, glancing down. He looks soft and tired and sad, sympathetic for Raven, a girl he literally just met, and Clarke feels waves of unexpected fondness for him. Before she can think it through, she holds the bottle out to him.

“You want a drink?”

***

When Bellamy and Miller walk into the house at two in the morning a few weeks later, they’re expecting all the lights to be off and the house to be silent, Octavia to be asleep in bed, and no one else to be home except her.

Instead, they come home to the smell of burnt cookies, a soft light shining out from the kitchen, and a bunch of voices shouting and laughing.

“I should have known,” Bellamy mutters, and Miller smirks.

Octavia, Clarke, Raven, Jasper, and Monty are all sitting around the kitchen table, playing cards and yelling at the top of their lungs. A tray of slightly overcooked cookies is on the counter, as well as a speaker that is playing soft background music.  

“Oh, hey Octavia, you have friends over!” Bellamy exclaims, overly peppy. “Thanks for calling ahead and telling me, I really appreciate being kept in the loop.”

Miller snickers, but Octavia completely ignores his sarcasm. She’s in too good of a mood for it to bother her. “Bell! Miller! Come join us. We’re playing Bullshit, it’s way more fun with more people,” she says, waving them over.

“Sure,” Miller says before Bellamy can decline the offer, looking amused. He takes a seat next to Octavia and ruffles her hair like she’s still seven years old. “How’s Lincoln?”

“He’s fine,” O says, blushing a little and shoving his hand off her head. “Do you know Raven? This is Raven. She was Clarke’s friend back in Colorado. And you know Monty and Jasper. Bellamy, are you going to sit down or not?”

All eyes turn to face him. He exhales heavily through his nose and takes a seat beside Clarke.

(It was the only open seat left, okay?)

Raven gathers everyone’s cards to start a new game, dealing as if she’d worked in a casino for years. The whole thing starts out tame enough, but it becomes apparent in the first few minutes that Miller is a better liar than all of them put together, and Jasper tries to psych everyone out (and fails), and Octavia calls Bullshit on nearly every turn just because she can.  

And, of course, Bellamy and Clarke go straight for each other’s throats.

“BULLSHIT!” Clarke yells as soon as he lays his card down. “That is complete and utter bullshit, you fucking _liar_.”

Smirking, Bellamy flips his card over, revealing which one it is. “Octavia, correct me if I’m wrong,” he says, “but I was on threes, wasn’t I?”

“You were,” she agrees, grinning hugely.

“And I don’t know, Princess,” Bellamy continues, “but that sure looks a lot like the three of clubs to me. What do you think?”

Clarke groans. “I think you’re a _jackass_ ,” she snaps, and grudgingly takes the whole pile. One of them falls out and flutters to the ground. Bellamy scoops it up and expertly flicks it at her face.

“You forgot one.”

“Fuck you,” Clarke mutters, but there isn’t any venom behind it. “Miller, it’s your turn.”

Miller holds his hand up in front of his face, pretending to inspect his cards, but Bellamy catches him and Octavia exchanging a knowing glance. Which Bellamy does not appreciate.

“Take your turn sometime in the next year, Nathan,” he says, and Miller smirks at him before laying down another card.

The rest of the night goes on like that, full of teasing and ribbing and laughing, until about four in the morning, at which point Octavia votes they all collapse on the couch together and sleep, and everyone is too tired to argue. 

Bellamy ends up squished next to Clarke in the middle, and try as he might, he can’t say he really minds.

***

“So there’s a party at Fox’s on Friday night,” Octavia says, her smirk impish and mischievous.

Jasper points a celery stick at her. “Is there gonna be alcohol?”

“It’s a _high school party_ ,” she answers, rolling her eyes. “What do you think?”

“Nice,” Jasper says, and high-fives Monty. “We’re in.”

All three of them turn to Clarke, who leans back in her chair, considering.

“Come on, Clarke,” Octavia wheedles. “You’re graduating high school in less than a week! We have to go to at least one high school party together before the year’s out and all three of you leave me here alone.”

“She’s got a point,” Monty agrees.

Clarke taps her chin. Octavia holds her gaze, her fingers locked together in a pleading gesture.

“Well,” Clarke says finally, breaking into a smile, “I _am_ really good at beer pong.”

They arrive at Fox’s house at 9:30 Friday night, and the party is already going strong. Octavia leads the group inside, bold and fierce, acting as if she owns the place. Clarke and the boys follow a little less confidently, taking in the sights. It’s a lot like the party she met Finn at, Clarke thinks, with music blaring and beer everywhere and people making out like it’ll actually mean something to them tomorrow morning.

Thinking of Finn makes Clarke think of Raven, who had opted to stay home, saying “I don’t know anyone there except you four, and besides, I’d rather get drunk on my own terms, for my own reasons, than have high school idiots pouring shots down my throat”.

She has a point, Clarke supposes. But she’s wrong about one thing – _no one_ is going to be pouring shots down Clarke’s throat tonight except Clarke.

“So where’s the keg?” Jasper shouts in her ear, and she grins.

***

Octavia snuck out. _Again._ To go to a fucking _party_.

She is s _o_ dead when Bellamy finds her.

He and Miller pull up to Fox’s house, it’s about 1 am, and by the looks of it, the party is still going strong. They storm inside, Miller pulling his beanie down over his forehead and putting on his Tough LookTM. Bellamy grabs ahold of the first person he vaguely recognizes – Drew, he thinks the kid’s name is – and demands, “Octavia Blake. Where is she?”

“Fuck, dude,” Drew slurs. “I don’t know. Look upstairs.”

“Bellamy? Miller?” someone says, and both of them whirl around.

“Monty!” Bellamy nearly faints with relief. “Thank God. Where’s Octavia?”

He frowns. “I saw her just a minute ago. I think she’s upstairs…”

“Show us,” Bellamy demands, but Monty’s frown deepens.

“I will, but – Bellamy, Clarke is…” He pauses, thinks, and finishes with, “Clarke is in bad shape. I think she needs to go home, but Jasper and I both have been drinking, and I really don’t think we should drive.”

“Even when you’re drunk you’re responsible,” Miller teases.

“Shit,” mutters Bellamy, thinking hard.

“Look,” Miller says, becoming serious again. “Monty can show me where O is and I’ll take them and Jasper home in Jasper’s car. You find Clarke and take care of her, okay? Then you can chew O out when you get home.”

It sounds suspiciously like Miller is trying to set him up with Clarke, but Bellamy doesn’t have time to worry about it. “Fine. Go. I’ll see you at home. And threaten Octavia _fervently_ for me,” he instructs Miller, who just rolls his eyes and follows Monty upstairs.

Finding Clarke proves to be much easier than Bellamy thought it would be. He scours the house, shoving aside the throngs of drunken high-schoolers, his eyes scanning the crowd for the familiar mop of blonde curls. He finds her surprisingly quickly, playing beer pong.

He’s intending to just go up to her, grab her hand, and pull her out to the car with him no matter how much she kicks and screams, but that’s not quite the way it happens. Instead, her face lights up at the sight of him and she calls, “Bellamy!” in a voice that’s far more chipper than he’s used to hearing. She staggers over to him and all but collapses into his arms.

“What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you and Octavia,” he says, taking her by the waist to support her better. And then he gets a good look at her, and she’s just wearing a tight black tank top and very short cutoff jeans, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed as she grins up at him, and _fuck,_ this is _Clarke Griffin_ he’s staring at _,_ and a _drunk_ Clarke Griffin at that. He needs to get a damn grip. “Come on, we have to go.”

“But I was winning at beer pong,” she protests.

“Not anymore. I’m taking you home. You need about ten years of sleep to get all that alcohol out of your system. How much did you drink?”

“I don’t know why you always choose Ike when we play Super Smash Brothers. I mean, Meta Knight can _fly_ , Bellamy.”

“That’s not an answer, but it’s weird enough to make me realize that you really need to be in bed right about now,” Bellamy decides, leading her out of the house and toward his car. “And Ike has an awesome sword.”

“Meta Knight has a sword, too.”

“Yeah, but Ike looks cool. Meta Knight is just sort of a blob.”

Clarke looks more offended than she probably should be, considering they’re discussing Smash characters. “A _super-cool_ blob. A blob with _armour_. Does _Ike_ have armour?”

“Yes,” Bellamy answers, turning the key in the ignition. “Also Ike actually has a torso and limbs.”

“Meta Knight doesn’t need a torso to _kick Ike’s ass_.”

Bellamy shakes his head a little, hiding a smile. “I can’t believe you’re arguing with me even when you’re drunk out of your mind.”

“I like arguing with you,” Clarke says bluntly, pulling her legs up onto the seat and curling up with her back against the door.

Bellamy’s mouth twitches, fighting a smile. “Yeah, I like arguing with you too.”

Clarke furrows her brow. “But you hate me.”

“What?” He glances over at her in surprise. “No, I don’t.”

“Yes you do,” she insists.

“Clarke, I don’t hate you,” Bellamy tells her firmly, even though saying it is stupid, since she probably won’t remember a word of this conversation tomorrow. “I’m an asshole most of the time, and I say stupid things, but I promise I don’t hate you.”

“You promise?” she repeats, and he nods.

“Look, if I hated you, I would have left you at the party,” he points out. “I promise.”

Clarke falls silent, accepting this. Bellamy returns his attention to the road while she stares out the window at the streetlights, and then she says, “I don’t want to go home.”

He blinks. “You don’t?”

She shakes her head forcefully, not looking away from the window. “I _really_ don’t.”

It’s on the tip of his tongue to ask her why, but he swallows the question and just says, “Okay.”

Fifteen minutes later, Bellamy is carrying a sleeping Clarke through the door to his house. Miller lets him in, looking exhausted. “Octavia wasn’t drunk,” he explains to Bellamy. “A little tipsy, but nothing serious. And she’s drug-free. She’s asleep, but I made it clear how disappointed you were in her for sneaking out, so you’re welcome.”

“Thanks, Nate,” Bellamy says, and Miller gives him a rare smile. Bellamy only ever calls him “Nate” when he’s really serious about something. “You can crash in the living room if you want.”

Miller shakes his head. “I’m heading home. Good luck with Griffin,” he says, and then he’s gone.

Bellamy carries Clarke into his bedroom and deposits her gently on the bed. He carefully folds up a pair of sweatpants and an old shirt and places them on the table too, leaving a bottle of water and some aspirin on top of the clothes; he finds her phone and fires a quick text to Raven:  _it's Bellamy, Clarke is drunk as shit, she's staying here tonight,_  and then he tucks her carefully under the covers, trying not to rouse her as he does so. As he pulls the blankets up, however, he catches sight of a few lines of writing across her upper arm, and immediately looks away.

She has a soulmate. Of _course_ she has a soulmate.

Suddenly this all feels wildly inappropriate. Intimate, even. Picking up a drunken Clarke from a party, taking her back to his house, tucking her into his bed.

Bellamy frowns. No, it’s just common decency. She’s Octavia’s friend, and honestly, she's become his friend too. He’s just being kind, behaving like a decent human being. He’d do this for Octavia in a heartbeat if Miller hadn’t done it already. He’s acting like Clarke’s big brother, that’s all.

But then he looks back down at her, blonde hair spilling everywhere, and he brushes a strand out of her face, and _fuck,_ none of this _feels_ very brotherly, if he’s being honest.

His hand goes to his own arm subconsciously, and suddenly he feels guilty about his own soulmate. Because she’s amazing. She’s smart and kind and caring, and she’s his _soulmate,_ and now here he is with some other girl, staring at her like some kind of idiot.

But the thing is, Clarke is smart and kind and caring, too. She’s nothing like the stuck-up rich princess he once thought she was. She really, genuinely cares for Octavia, and her other friends, and she’s determined and intelligent and hilarious and downright fucking beautiful, and _shit_ this feels a lot like a crush, which is not allowed.

Bellamy pries his eyes away from Clarke’s sleeping form and makes himself head down the hallway, as far away from her as possible. He flops onto the couch, putting an arm over his eyes and tries to force himself into sleep.

***

Clarke wakes up to a dimly lit bedroom, a dry mouth, and a pounding headache. At first she doesn’t know what the hell is going on, but soon it all starts to come back to her. The party, the beer…

Oh, fuck. _Octavia_. Where the hell was Octavia? Clarke doesn’t remember leaving the party with her.

Clarke is already sitting up and pushing off the bedcovers before she realizes that she’s not in her bed. She’s in a dim room, the curtains drawn although she can see the sun shining through them. The bed is larger than hers and a lot more comfortable. There are clothes strewn across the floor, much like in her own room, but these are guys’ clothes.

Something like a lightbulb goes off in her head and everything comes rushing back to her at once. Bellamy coming to pick her up. Driving her home. Carrying her into his house.

Holy shit… is this his room? Is she in _Bellamy’s bed_?

Clarke starts to slide out of bed before catching sight of a bottle of water and some aspirin on top of a pair of folded clothes on the table beside the bed. She smiles softly upon seeing it. Bellamy Blake, infamous grumpy asshole, is and forever will be a mom friend at heart.

She takes the aspirin and chugs over half of the water, and her headache starts to let up. There’s the sound of footsteps outside the door, someone walking down the hall, and Clarke pulls on the sweatpants and shirt before emerging from the bedroom to investigate.

Octavia is there in the kitchen, seated at the table sipping tea and basically looking pretty exhausted. She gives Clarke a nod when she sees her and looks her up and down, not so subtly. “He gave you the good sweatpants,” Octavia muses. “Good thing, too.”

Clarke plops into a chair beside her. “Why?”

“Because his other ones have, like, a million rips and holes—”

“No, I mean,” Clarke breaks in, “why did he bring me here? Or pick me up from the party, or take care of me, or any of it? Why would he…?”

Her voice trails off. Octavia rolls her eyes and smirks.

“Look, I honestly think it’s kinda cute, this whole ‘feud’ thing you two have going on,” she says, waving her hand dismissively in the air. “But he doesn’t actually hate you, Clarke.”

The words ring a bell in the back of Clarke’s mind, and she frowns, remembering.

_“I’m an asshole most of the time, and I say stupid things, but I promise I don’t hate you.”_

_“You promise?”_

“And I know you don’t hate him either,” Octavia continues, sipping her tea and smirking over the lip of her mug.

Clarke lifts an eyebrow, snapping back to the present. “Yeah? How do you know that?”

“Because I know _you_ , loser,” O points out, and kicks Clarke lightly under the table.

Bellamy appears then, entering the kitchen in a pair of blue plaid pajama pants – they really are riddled with holes, Octavia wasn’t kidding – and a grey t-shirt. He looks fairly bedraggled, and Clarke realizes that if she was in his room, then he must have had to sleep on the couch. Which likely sucked. Clarke has tried to sleep on the Blakes’ couch before. It isn’t exactly fun.

“Hey,” he says when he sees Clarke, smiling a little, hesitant, with his disheveled curls falling into his eyes and his eyes soft and tired, and _shit no stop beating so fast, heart, what the hell_

“How you feeling?” he asks, and she tries hard to focus.

“Uh… kind of shitty, to be honest.”

He smirks. “I’ll bet. You were pretty out of it last night.”

Clarke drops her head into her hands and sighs. “Well. That’s great to hear.”

Octavia’s phone buzzes and she drains the last of her tea, pushing back her chair. “I’m going out with Anya and Raven. Clarke, you can stick around, though, if you want. Bell, you’ll keep Clarke company, won’t you?”

Before either of them have time to respond, she’s marching out of the kitchen, and then the front door slams closed behind her.

Bellamy and Clarke look at one another for a long moment before he glances away, rubbing his temple, and mutters, “She was supposed to be grounded.”

“You’re doing great at enforcing that.”

He snorts. “I guess it doesn’t matter. Miller and I both read her the riot act for sneaking out last night. Chances are that since two of us yelled at her, at least some of it will stick.”

Clarke smiles. Bellamy leans back against the counter, studying her. “So. You ever seen Stranger Things?”

She actually hasn’t, so they spend the entire day binge-watching it and eating junk food and making snarky comments to each other, and it’s… nice, actually. Usually when they snap at each other, there’s an edge in their voices, an undertone. Today, though, everything is in good humour. Their insults are fond, their teasing friendly.

They pause the show to go make popcorn, and when they come back to the couch, Clarke blurts out, “Hey, thanks for taking care of me. I, uh… it was really nice of you.”

Bellamy shrugs, like it’s no big deal, like he does this kind of thing for people every weekend. “No problem. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“Really?” Clarke wasn’t quite expecting him to say that.

“Yeah. Look, I – I know that I’m an asshole sometimes, but I really do care about my friends. Especially when they’re as drunk as you were last night.”

She raises an eyebrow. “We’re friends?”

Bellamy ducks his head, and she can see his cheeks reddening slightly around his freckles. “Well, I mean, you can only argue over Apples to Apples so many times before it crosses the line from animosity into friendship.”

Clarke laughs. “Fair enough.”

He smiles back, and a few moments pass as his hand hovers over the remote, not quite ready to press play yet.

“Exactly how drunk was I?” Clarke finally asks, and Bellamy immediately snorts.

“You lectured me about the merits of Meta Knight vs Ike in Super Smash Bros.”

“Oh,” Clarke says, and it’s her turn to blush as Bellamy chuckles. “I argued in favour of Meta Knight, right?”

“Yeah, you bashed me for choosing Ike all the time.”

“Good. Drunk me knows her shit.”

Bellamy laughs again, out loud this time, and presses play.

***

Clarke and Bellamy have officially become friends, which is apparently a momentous occasion for all their friends.

“Clarke is coming over,” Octavia says, echoing what Bellamy has just told her.

“Yes.”

“And no one else is coming.”

“No, they’re not.”

“You’re just going to hang out with Clarke.”

“Yes,” Bellamy confirms. “Because we’re friends, and we enjoy each other’s company.”

Octavia folds her arms with a hint of a smirk on her face. “Now there’s something I thought I’d never see.”

Bellamy shakes his head and frowns at her. “We’re _friends_ , O,” he insists, but his sister just rolls her eyes, and the smirk stays on her face.

“Right. Yes. You and Clarke. Friends,” Octavia repeats, nodding along as if she’s actually buying any of it.

“ _Octavia._ ”

She holds up her hands in surrender. “Hey, forgive me for finding this a little interesting. It wasn’t that long ago that you two were at each other’s throats. You used to rant all the time about how she was a stuck-up princess.”

“Yeah, but then I found out that she wasn’t actually a stuck-up princess,” Bellamy says, and Octavia’s smirk only grows.

“Alright, well. I’m heading out, so have fun with your best friend Clarke Griffin,” she calls over her shoulder as she leaves the room, and Bellamy rubs a palm over his face and sighs.

Their other friends are going to have a field day with this.

Raven, of course, is just as smug as Octavia when she learns of their newfound friendship, and the two of them together are a nightmare – the teasing is endless. Jasper and Monty are completely flabbergasted, neither of them having expected Bellamy and Clarke to actually _get along_ , and Miller is simply unsurprised because, as he tells Bellamy one day, “Please, I saw this coming from a mile away. The way you act around her is so transparent.”

Bellamy, of course, answers this with “Shut the fuck up Nathan,” as Octavia cackles, and Miller gives her a fist bump.

***

Months.

It’s been _months,_ and still the teasing hasn’t stopped.

Literally not a single member of their friend group has shut up about Clarke and Bellamy, and Clarke is about ready to punch someone in the face. The only person she can hang out with without fear of being constantly ribbed is Bellamy, which drives her to hang out with him even more, which only adds fuel to the fire.

That whole cycle, actually, is probably why the teasing hasn’t stopped.

Anyway. It’s a Saturday in September, and Clarke is bored, and college is hard, and she needs time to chill for a change.

So, naturally, she heads over to the Blake’s.

She rings the doorbell, excited. She hasn’t seen either of the siblings in a while due to classes and work and a bunch of other stuff, so she’s eager to meet up with them again.

But then Bellamy answers the door basically looking like utter shit – dark circles under his red, puffy eyes, hair disheveled, wearing his ripped-up old pajamas – and Clarke immediately freaks out.

“Hey, what’s going on? What’s wrong?”

Bellamy wordlessly steps away from the door, letting her in, and closes it behind her, then turns to her with an exhausted sigh.

“My mom,” he starts to say, and his voice is hoarse and fragile. “My mom died three years ago today.”

 _Fuck._ Clarke knows about grief, grief for a parent in particular, and how much it absolutely sucks, so she automatically pulls him into a tight hug without hesitation. He’s a little stiff at first, not having expected it, but then he hugs her back and presses his face into her hair and whispers, “Thank God you’re in my life.”

Clarke is pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to hear that, so she doesn’t comment, just gives him a soft smile when she pulls away.

“Shit, Bellamy, I’m really sorry. Grieving sucks.”

He shrugs, feigning nonchalance, although she sees right through him, and he knows it. He’s just used to pretending he’s okay, though, which is something that kills Clarke to see.

“I mean, not like she was a great mom or anything. She kinda forced me into parenthood at like, five. But still…”

“She was still your mom,” Clarke finishes, and he nods, scratching the back of his neck and not looking her in the eyes.

Octavia has gone out, preferring to distract herself rather than wallow in grief. Bellamy, on the other hand, prefers to wallow. But it’s not healthy, purposely surrounding himself with negativity, and Clarke decides not to let him.

So instead, they look through old photo albums and watch bad movies on TV and make grilled cheese and Clarke burns it because she’s too busy laughing while watching him try to swat an elusive fly. He’s leaping up on counters and pushing chairs out of the way, flinging the swatter around like a maniac, and Clarke is doubled over laughing because of how utterly ridiculous he looks, and by the time the sun is down Bellamy seems much better.

They end up on the couch much later that evening, Bellamy sitting at one end and Clarke at the other with her back against the armrest and her feet tucked underneath his thigh for warmth. Bellamy’s working on a paper for class while Clarke reads, and the TV is playing quietly in the background – a history documentary, of course, Bellamy had insisted when he saw it was based on Alexander the Great – and it’s peaceful. Familiar, homey. It’s not the first time they’ve done something like this.

There’s the sound of a key in the lock, drawing both of their attention. Octavia enters, sees them immediately, and smirks. “Would you look at that,” she muses. “You two are so fucking domestic, it’s unreal. Clarke, just move in with us already.”

Neither of them know quite how to respond to that, especially not with Octavia still standing there grinning like a smug jack-o-lantern. It occurs to Clarke how late it is, and she reluctantly stands, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. “I think I should probably take off.”

Octavia grins at her once more and disappears down the hall to her room. Bellamy stands, too, and walks her to the door. “Thanks,” he tells her, soft. “Just for… for being there today.”

“Yeah, of course. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Bellamy’s smile is oddly sad and fond at the same time. “Yeah, we’re friends.”

There’s a moment of silence, and Clarke is still feeling awkward but not really knowing _why,_ and honestly it’s really fucking annoying. “I’ll come back around when I have time,” she promises, and Bellamy nods, and as Clarke reaches for the door handle her sleeve rides up and she catches a glimpse of a soul mark on her wrist.

And all of a sudden she feels guilty, guilty about having a soulmate and spending all this time with another guy – even though she and Bellamy are _just friends_ and there isn’t anything to feel guilty about.

(Which isn’t true, and she knows it; she knows she’s definitely falling for him – if she hasn’t fallen already – which is totally inappropriate, not only because he’s Octavia’s brother, but also because she _already has a soulmate.)_

 _I’m kind of a mess,_ she writes to him that night, and he answers almost immediately.

_Yeah, join the club._

***

Octavia’s eighteenth birthday is in two days.

Which is fucking _weird._

She’s growing up way too fast. Next thing Bellamy knows, she’ll be away at college somewhere out of state, and he’ll have lost her.

“You’re such a dramatic little shit,” Clarke teases when he tells her this as they’re setting up for O’s party. “You aren’t _losing_ her. She’s just growing up. She can’t stay a kid forever.”

“Maybe not. But she’s always going to be my _little_ sister. It’s just weird.”

“ _You’re_ just weird,” Clarke mumbles, furrowing her brow as she concentrates on putting up the streamers, and Bellamy snorts.

They’d tried to throw her a surprise party, except she totally knew it was coming, so it kind of lost the effect, but Octavia is still delighted to see everyone. They’d invited a lot of people – more people than Bellamy is comfortable with, if he’s being honest – and Octavia flits around the room, hugging everyone and laughing and shining like the sun, and suddenly the four hours of work to set up the house and the fact that his living room is jam-packed with people seem totally worth it.

They get a movie going almost immediately, and just like that the party is up and running. There’s laughter and music and board games and yelling and it’s just _fun_. Even Bellamy’s antisocial ass is finding it difficult to have a bad time.

Eventually though, he does need to get away from all the people, if only for a second. So after everyone’s piled onto the couch to watch Harry Potter, Bellamy sneaks into the kitchen. But he isn’t alone.

Clarke is already there, standing on her tiptoes to reach the napkins on a high shelf and swearing quietly to herself under her breath. Bellamy can’t help smiling at the sight. He comes up behind her and takes down the napkins for her. “You know, you could have just climbed onto the counter.”

“That was my plan B,” she admits. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Clarke smiles a little, but it drops off her face almost immediately when her eyes move down to his neck, and her face grows concerned. “What’s that?”

Bellamy covers it immediately. “It’s just a scrape… I got it at work. It’s fine, it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“Shit, Bellamy, did you wash it out? It could be infected. I can’t believe you didn’t show me earlier,” Clarke rants. “Fuck. Sit down. I’m going to take care of this.”

“Clarke, it’s fine,” Bellamy tries to explain.

“No, it’s not; sit your ass down,” she says forcefully, already reaching for a cloth.

“Clarke—”

“SIT.”

It’s really pointless to argue with Clarke when she gets like this, so Bellamy just gives in and plops down into a kitchen chair. She pulls a chair up to sit down facing him and carefully cleans out the scrape, and it honestly hurts more than he expected it to.

Yeah, okay, maybe it’s a _little_ worse than he let on.

Her eyebrows are knit together in concentration, and her other hand is gripping his shoulder, and her face is unusually close to his, so close that their breaths are intermingling. Her thumb brushes across his neck as she dabs at a drop of blood, and he immediately gets goosebumps.

 _(Goosebumps._ Like a damn teenager on a first date.)

Clarke is oblivious to the thoughts swirling around inside his head, pulling back after a few minutes. “That’s all, I think. We should patch it up, though.” She rises and looks around the kitchen a bit helplessly. “Where should I put the cloth?”

“Oh, here…” Bellamy stands and reaches for the cloth, except when he takes it, his fingers end up accidentally closing around her hand instead.

It occurs to him just how close they’re standing to each other.

Clarke shifts her weight, but she doesn’t pull her hand away, and suddenly Bellamy realizes he’s staring at her mouth like a fucking idiot, and he’s about to let go and back up because this is totally not okay, but then he feels her other hand curl into his shirt, which changes the whole game. Without even really thinking about it, he reaches for her waist, tentatively placing his fingertips on her hip.

“I…” she whispers, her voice so soft that he wouldn’t have heard it if he wasn’t this close to her. “I have a soulmate.”

Bellamy’s heart plummets, but it’s not like it’s particularly surprising. He has one, too, after all.

“Yeah, me too,” he admits.

But neither of them move away, and he just can’t seem to pull his eyes away from her lips, and she smells like the vanilla candles they’d lit around the house, and it feels kind of like she’s tugging him toward her, her fingers still buried in the fabric of his shirt.

And then the kitchen door swings open and they both fly away from each other like the debris of an explosion.

Jasper and Harper enter, laughing, teasing and shoving each other, too involved in their own playful argument to even really notice Bellamy and Clarke. They grab a drink from the fridge and go back out to the living room.

The door creaks shut behind them, and a heavy, awkward silence settles over the kitchen.

Clarke is looking anywhere but at him, rocking back onto her heels, and Bellamy keeps thinking he should say something but every time he tries, nothing but air comes out of his mouth. Finally Clarke says, “I should probably head home, my – my mom will be worried, I told her I wasn’t gonna be out late tonight.”

She leaves the kitchen in a hurry, not glancing back. Bellamy doesn’t stop her even though his whole body is screaming at him to go after her.

Instead, he stays in the kitchen for a few minutes, still feeling the ghost of her fingers on his neck, and then he goes back out to rejoin the group and pretends to be fine.

After the party that night, though, he’s lying in bed, thinking about the messages covering his arms and shoulders and legs, and he tries as hard as he possibly can not to think about Clarke being the one to write them.

It doesn’t work.

***

It isn’t until a week after that Clarke works up the courage to go back to the Blake’s with Raven at her side. Octavia answers the door and the three of them are on the floor of the living room, playing cards again, when Bellamy walks in.

His eyes latch onto hers immediately and hold her gaze captive for a few moments, and then Octavia calls, “Bell, come play!” and he looks away.

So he ends up joining in, too, and Clarke is trying desperately to pretend like nothing has changed between them, but every time she so much as glances in his direction she remembers what his fingertips felt like on her hip and how the scar on his lip looked up close and she is _so fucked._

But she’s nothing if not stubborn and she keeps on acting like everything’s normal even though it’s definitely not, and honestly, she’s probably in love with Bellamy, but she has a soulmate and he’s amazing and _her soulmate_ , and basically she just doesn’t know how to feel about anything.

(Raven told her a few nights ago after hearing the story that she was “completely pathetic” and her life was “kind of a total mess”, and she’s not wrong.)

The game is getting intense and Octavia leans forward to shout jokingly at Raven, who is sitting opposite her, but as she does so she jostles Clarke’s hand, in which Clarke happens to be holding a can of Coke, which then promptly spills all over her sweatshirt.

“Oh, shit,” Octavia murmurs, leaning over to inspect the damage. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

Clarke shakes her head. “It’s okay. I should probably just go wash it.”

She tugs it up and over her head without thinking, forgetting that she’s wearing just a tank top underneath. A tank top that shows her shoulders and arms. And her shoulders and arms are covered with soulmate messages.

Bellamy notices them right away, of course, and Clarke sees his eyes get _huge,_ which is probably not a good sign. Clarke stands up, so quickly she almost kicks Raven in the side, scooping up her sweatshirt. “You guys can keep playing, I’m just going to try and get the stain out.”

“I’ll help,” Bellamy says quickly, much to Clarke’s surprise, but she forces herself to just shrug and head to the kitchen, Bellamy on her heels. She doesn’t miss the faces Raven and Octavia m make at each other, either, but now is not the time to confront them.

Bellamy closes the door behind them as soon as they enter the kitchen and closes his eyes, leaning against the counter. It’s on the tip of Clarke’s tongue to ask if he’s okay, but honestly, she just wants this over with. She’s never felt more exposed, having her soulmate’s private messages displayed across her skin. “Okay, so, uh… do you think water would work to get the stain out, or should we use somethi – ing…”

She stammers to a stop, staring wide-eyed as Bellamy tugs his own shirt off and discards it on the kitchen table. “Bellamy, what…?”

He doesn’t say anything, just comes a little closer to her and spreads his arms, his face completely unreadable. Curious, Clarke walks toward him, suddenly catching sight of the writing across his skin, and oh shit no way, no way, no _fucking way._

The marks on Bellamy’s arms are none other than the _exact same marks_ that Clarke has on hers. The words, the very sentences that she wrote to her soulmate last night, are right there on Bellamy’s skin.

Her mouth drops open a little and her heart starts beating a hundred times a second and fuck she’s been so completely and utterly oblivious _._

Mother died recently? Working to support his little sister? History nerd?

She’s been _so stupid._

“It’s you,” she says, and it feels like a revelation, like she’s discovered something, like she should be shouting “EUREKA!”

But at the same time, it doesn’t. It just feels familiar. Obvious, even. Because, really, she should have known. Because it’s _Bellamy_ , of _course_ it’s Bellamy, how could it possibly have been anyone else?

“It’s me,” he agrees, and Clarke reaches out to brush her fingers over the writing – _her_ writing – on his skin.

There are a few moments of silence before he says, “Shit, we’ve really been idiots, haven’t we?”

It feels like there’s this huge bubble of emotion inside Clarke’s chest, building and rising and then it breaks free from her in the form of laughter. Bellamy laughs, too, ducking his head, his curls falling across his forehead, and yeah, Clarke really is an idiot. Her soulmate could never have been anyone but Bellamy.

She slides her hand up and around behind his neck, tangling her fingers in his hair, and pulls him down to her. He kisses her gently at first, hesitantly, but Clarke grins against his lips and tugs at his hair a little and he gives in, pulling her flush against him and kissing her hungrily, like he’s dying of thirst and she’s the last drop of water on earth, like he can’t get enough of her, and _fuck_ she loves him.

“I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you,” she says when they finally break apart, bright-eyed and red-cheeked and breathing heavily.

Bellamy’s face is soft and he smiles, leans forward to press his forehead against hers. “Well,” he murmurs, “you’d be a pretty shitty soulmate if you weren’t.”

Clarke laughs, probably sounding a little hysterical, but honestly she’s so full of joy that she gives exactly zero fucks. “You’re such an asshole.”

“I try. And in case you didn’t catch it, that was code for ‘I’m in love with you, too’.”

Neither of them seems to be able to stop smiling. They probably both look like psychos. “Yeah, I caught it.”

He presses his lips to her forehead and Clarke wraps her arms around his torso, closing her eyes and just relishing in the feel of him. This feels right. This feels like _home_.

Maybe there really is something to all this soulmate BS, after all.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and/or kudos make my life. Also, feel free to cry with me on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/nefarioustortellini)!


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